Are Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty and Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of Ming Dynasty really thrifty emperors?

Are Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty and Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang of Ming Dynasty really thrifty emperors? Among the hundreds of emperors in ancient China, there were indeed many people who advocated frugality. For example, Liu Heng, the emperor of China, married the Queen Geng Sang and told the world by imperial edict that he refused to be contributed. Twenty-four years in office, no more palaces, no more chariots and horses, no more clothes. His posthumous testament was simple, and his mausoleum was full of clay, without gold, silver, copper and tin decoration. During the Northern and Southern Dynasties, Emperor Wu of Song Wudi selflessly hid and preserved the farm tools that Danyang people used to educate their children. Guo Wei, Mao of the Zhou Dynasty in the later Five Dynasties, lived a simple life. When he was seriously ill, he resigned his nephew Chai Rong many times, who later succeeded to the throne. After death, I wear paper clothes, collect them with earthen coffins, don't repair the underground palace, don't guard the tomb, and don't stand a stone statue in front of the tomb ... but some emperors' so-called frugality is only superficial. They built palaces on a large scale, which cost a lot of money and brought great disasters to the people.

Sui Wendi Sui Wendi is one of the emperors who is famous for his frugality. There are records about his frugality in Historical Records: riding horses and daily necessities are repaired and reused after being damaged, and it is not easy to replace them; The clothes worn by the harem concubines have been washed many times; Once he had diarrhea, the doctor prepared too many antidiarrheal drugs for him and needed one or two peppers, but he couldn't find them anywhere in the palace. Take yourself as an example to educate children to be frugal, and give some old clothes they have worn to Prince Yong Yang, so that he can be vigilant when looking back; At the beginning of the throne, the dog circus food should not be offered; Bing Lu Tong, the secretariat of Xiangzhou, kowtowed and offered silk and burned it in front of the court to admonish officials ... But Emperor Wendi of Sui built a new capital and palace, but it was not mentioned.

Emperor Wendi of the Sui Dynasty mastered the military power through intrigue and intrigue, and then forced Yu Wenchan, the eight-year-old Jingdi of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, to take his place. After sitting in the dragon chair, you will kill Yu Wenchan and kill all the members of the Northern Zhou royal family. Because of superstition, he lived in the old palace of the Northern Zhou Emperor and felt weak inside. He thought those ghosts wanted to settle accounts with him. When there were signs of trouble, he thought it was haunted. So in the second year of his reign, he wrote a letter to build a new capital in the northwest of the old city on the grounds that the old Miyagi was too small. Because his earliest knighthood was Daxing Gong, he named the new capital Daxing City (now Xi City, Shaanxi Province), and the palace in the city was also named after Daxing.

In February of the 13th year (593), Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty was tired of living in Daxing City. He wrote to build Renshou Palace in qi zhou (now south of Fengxiang County, Shaanxi Province), which was designed by General Yuwen Kai and supervised by Prime Minister Su Yang, and recruited hundreds of thousands of civilian workers to fill the mountain valley to build the palace. The new palace was completed in two years, and the buildings were stepped and connected in turn, which was spectacular. In order to take credit, Su Yang and others urgently urged the building service supervisor, and tens of thousands of people died of fatigue. Some migrant workers who fell on the construction site were pushed into the pit by the overseer's soldiers before they died and buried alive with earth and stone. The cruelty of Su Yang and others is recorded in Zi Tongzhi Jiansui Ji as follows: The servant was anxious, Ding Fu died many times, and was exhausted. He pushed the pit and covered it with earth and stone, so he was built in the ground. Thousands of people died. It can be seen that Emperor Wendi's palace was built on the bones of civilian workers.

In that year1February, Emperor Wendi of Sui issued a decree to build 12 CCB Palace between Beijing and Renshou Palace, so as to enjoy the journey back and forth.

Like Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang, Emperor Wendi of Sui Dynasty, was also an emperor who was famous for his frugality. His story of advocating frugality sounds even more touching: when he met the king of Wu, the general gave Chen Youliang a gold bed and destroyed it to show his dislike of luxury; When he became emperor, he ate more vegetables for three meals a day, and the decoration of cars and cars was changed from gold and silver to copper; Although the old lady Ma Shi is a queen, she often wears washed clothes. When they fade, she doesn't want to throw them away. The warden walked in the rain in his new boots and was scolded by the staff; Seeing that an official once dressed up beautifully and spent 500 yuan, he scolded: 500 yuan is the annual expense of a few people in a farmer's family, and you actually spent a dress. Is it reckless to be so extravagant? I ordered it not to do this. ...

However, Zhu Yuanzhang spent a lot of money and manpower to build a large-scale capital, and finally stopped the construction of the capital, which made this huge cost go down the drain, but few people mentioned it.

Xiang Yu led his troops to conquer Xianyang, Qin Dou, burning, killing and looting. He sighed: Wealth does not return to his hometown, like clothes embroidered at night, who knows? Then he established himself as the overlord of the western Chu, led the army eastward, and made Pengcheng (now Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province) his capital. Xiang Yu's words and deeds are actually the common psychological reflection of China people for thousands of years. If a person makes a name for himself in a foreign country, all his colleagues and friends around him know that it is not enough. He must wear clothes and go back to his hometown to let his neighbors know that the poor boy at that time has now mixed up his personal appearance, otherwise he will walk in the dark in gorgeous clothes and no one will see him. Zhu Yuanzhang was born in abject poverty and bumpy. Although he is wearing a yellow robe, it is difficult for him to get rid of this mentality. So after he acceded to the throne, regardless of the first counselor Liu Ji's dissuasion, he decided to build his capital in Fengyang, his hometown, and ordered Li Shanchang, the retired prime minister, to form a huge preparatory team to survey the terrain, plan and design, recruit craftsmen and collect building materials extensively. Yu Hongwu three years (1370), grand.

Zhu Yuanzhang made Zhongdu the future capital of Ming Dynasty. Its outer city is more than 60 miles in circumference, the forbidden wall is two feet high and more than 15 miles in circumference, and then the imperial city is more than seven miles in circumference, with a wall height of about four feet and a top width of about two feet. The design and planning of Zhongdu City absorbed the essence of previous capitals and highlighted the majesty of autocratic imperial power. There are Fengtian Hall, Gaihua Hall, Shenjing Hall, Wenhua Hall and Wuying Hall, as well as five harem areas for emperors, empresses, concubines, princes, emperors, Tai Huang and Empress Dowager. Outside the meridian gate, Zhongshu Province, Metropolitan Government and Yushitai are built, and ancestral temples, land gods and millet altars are built on both sides of Taiwan Province. Inside and outside the capital, there are the Founding Heroes Temple, Emperor Temple, Zhongdu City God Temple, imperial academy, Million Storehouse, Mouqiu, Fang Qiu, Asahi Temple, Xiyue Temple, Mountain and River Temple, Stargazing Platform, Yuankou, Drum Tower and Bell Tower. All institutions and facilities in the capital are available.

For the construction of the capital, Zhu Yuanzhang recruited1500,000 craftsmen, civilian workers, prisoners, immigrants and troops. The required stones are mined locally, and the bricks and tiles are collected from all over the country. In order to check the quality of city bricks supplied from all over the country, there are text codes on the bricks, such as land supply, official transfer, craftsman, firing time, etc. Archaeologists found that there are bricks supplied by 68 counties in 22 States and two inspection departments in Nanjing, Jiangxi and Huguang, but of course not all bricks are supplied to counties.

The precious wood needed was also collected from all over the country, and Zhu Yuanzhang even sent messengers to Sichuan, which had not yet been included in the territory of the Ming Dynasty, to buy nanmu. It is extremely difficult to cut and transport wood. These giant trees, which were used as pillars, were all cut down from deep forests and waterways, then transported to the Huaihe River by the Yangtze River and the Canal, then to the Lin Hao Shilicheng Wharf, then transported to the Zhongdu City East Lake by the Haohe River, and finally to Zhongdu City. Where there is no waterway, it needs to be transported by land, and the process is particularly difficult. Archaeologist Wang Jianying's book Ming Zhongdu has the following description:

According to the literature, some timber used for transportation and construction at that time was huge, and it had to be loaded on a special 32-wheeler when transported by land, and only 200 people could pull it. Because the big wood is too heavy, the wooden wheel will break when pressed, so I put an iron ring on the wheel. When the big wheel with iron ring rolls over the stone, the friction makes the sparks fly straight. After walking less than a mile, the hoop came apart, so we had to stop to change it. Therefore, a big wooden cart, in addition to being dragged by 200 people, has to be followed by 200 people carrying iron rings, stopping to repair the car in circles from time to time, so it can only walk ten miles a day. It takes 10 thousand workers to transport a big piece of wood from its place of origin to Fengyang by land and water. It is difficult to calculate how much labor it takes to transport such a big tree from all over the country to Fengyang.

It's too difficult to carry a tree. It is conceivable that building a huge capital, only timber, will consume huge resources and manpower!

Due to the urgent and heavy workload of the governor, many servants and non-commissioned officers died of illness. Zhu Yuanzhang himself told the governor's officials: In recent camps, most of the sergeants died of epidemic diseases, overwork in the heat and eating disorders. Dong Qi's servants were too eager to make them sick and die, which made me very miserable. Sergeant, the fate of those prisoners is even more tragic. Ye Boju, a Confucian instructor in Pingyao County, Shanxi Province, also said in his book "Causing Great Disaster: Today's Men" ... it is a crime to reclaim land and a shame to lash Chu ... If they break the law, they will be taken back. (Biography of Ye Boju in Ming Dynasty) This shows how tragic the fate of servants is.

However, in April of the eighth year of Hongwu (1375), the project was carried out for six years. When the capital began to take shape, Zhu Yuanzhang sent a letter to build the capital on the grounds that the service seriously injured the people and there were overlapping departments. The reason why Zhu Yuanzhang decided to build the capital by imperial edict and stopped building it in A Record of Ming Taizu can be summarized in one sentence: the desire to build the capital of Zhou and Han Dynasties was at the expense of labor. The real reason is that when he arrived in Xindu, he remembered the advice of Liu Ji, the first counselor and master of geomantic omen, and felt that Fengyang really had poor geomantic omen and there was no danger to rely on. He once wrote to the princes to build the first residence in Zhongdu, but I didn't know that these people were self-reliant, mostly from the emperor's hometown, and built luxury houses one after another. They are hundreds of miles away, the home of the princes, facing the first place, covered like a cloud ("Guangxu Fengyang County Records" Volume 10). If these guys get together to rebel, they will respond with one voice, which will become a climate and pose a serious threat to their dragon chairs. Liu Ji said to him before he retired: Fengyang is the hometown of the emperor, but it is not the place where the emperor is the capital. Although it has been put in the capital, it is not suitable for living. The old man is far-sighted. This parting message reached Zhu Yuanzhang's heart and became one of the reasons why he decided to stop building the capital.

There is no record of how much money was spent on the construction of the capital. However, according to experts' calculation of the manpower and material resources needed to build palaces in Yongle, Zhengde and Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, the cost was about equivalent to the sum of the six-year tax revenue of the country at that time. Such a huge project, construction, just because of the psychological distress of the emperor returning home dressed in rags; Stopping construction is also suspicious, fearing that the liegeman will rebel, that is, for the stability of imperial power. In short, this is only between the emperor and his master. As for how much manpower has been invested, how much wealth has been spent and how much loss has been brought to the people, it is nothing in Zhu Yuanzhang's eyes.

Of course, Zhu Yuanzhang didn't want to bear the big sin of building a big building and spending money. In Zhu Wen, the capital of China, he said: When the ministers discussed, they all said, "The ancient clock can be separated." In a word, put the blame on ministers. In order to cover up his guilt and make the capital disappear, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the demolition of some palaces in the Imperial City in the 16th year of Hongwu (1383) and built longxing temple with its materials. After that, people tore it down until there were only four walls left. Due to Zhu Yuanzhang's efforts to cover it up, all kinds of historical books except Fengyang local chronicles have swept through this disappearing capital. It was not until the late 1960s that archaeologist Wang Jianying was sent from Beijing to work in the May 7th Cadre School in Fengyang, Anhui Province, that he discovered this once glorious deserted capital and wrote a monograph, which shocked the historians.

Because there are too many extravagant and dissolute emperors in the history of China, Emperor Wendi of Sui and Zhu Yuanzhang, dressed in old clothes, sitting in old cars or burning a pile of silks and satins, have become dazzling highlights in the darkness. However, after historians painstakingly wrote a masterpiece and touted it repeatedly, this highlight was infinitely magnified, covering up the historical facts of the construction of Emperor Wendi and Zhu Yuanzhang. If you put your washed clothes in a repaired old car, it is no less than a golden sand to Jinshan compared with the palace built by people who spent a lot of money in Qian Qian and exhausted themselves. Therefore, Emperor Wendi of Sui and Zhu Yuanzhang saved a golden sand and won an eternal reputation, but no one mentioned that they squandered a golden mountain.